D - Examining the Chinese Mind

17 days until we return to the US for a couple of weeks. Almost there! In the mean time, class has been keeping us busy. In this post I wanted to talk about some of our past lessons and how we're doing examinations.

As an Oral English teacher, one of the dilemmas is deciding what the final exam should be. We've worked on a broad array of different topics - from directions to music to job interviews. The primary focus is on pronunciation and on-the-fly creation of english. The problem is that testing someone's speaking, while not difficult, can take some time. Our classes are 1 hour and 30 minutes, and each class has about 30 students. To examine a student for even five minutes would take 2 and a half hours. There are no classes during lunch here, so for exams my classes will get extended into eating time. Pity the poor students that catch me at 1pm when I haven't eaten since 8:30am!

I have two sets of students - 3rd year marine engineers and 1st year automation students. I haven't decided on an exam for the freshmen yet but for the marine engineers I am going to have them use phrases from our "For and Against" lesson.

Each students will get one of 8 proposal.

• Providing Free University Education
• Voting for Government Officials
• Paying Government Officials More Money
• Requiring China College Entry Examination
• Giving Money to the Poor
• Banning Smoking in Public Places
• Creating high taxes on alcohol
• Allowing Women in the Military

The students have to say if they are "for" or "against" the proposal and why. I will prod them with some additional questions to make them prove they aren't just going from memorization. I also gave them a general rubric describing how I will evaluate their performance. I'm expecting a pretty normal distribution, although the only students who will fail are probably those who haven't been coming to class and getting their attendance grade. I decided to do "For and Against" because 1) We did it in class 2) Opens the door to using a lot of different words and 3) I want them to develop opinions. Chinese people are so uninclined to have strong opinions so by discussing even mundane or previously-decided questions, I think there's some value.

What else have we been up to? Well C and I have been showing movies to our freshman classes. Allowing them to see how real people communicate in English is beneficial and helpful to their listening abilities. We turn on the English subtitles because their reading is far past their speaking. C has been showing "Walk the Line" (The Johnny Cash story). I showed that once but I have also shown "A Beautiful Mind". The students really seem to like both movies overall. Yesterday C noted how the Chinese are somewhat obsessed with the fact that a native Chinese person from the People's Republic of China has never won the Nobel Prize. There's a massive inferiority complex that results in the PRC thumping its chest whenever possible. "A Beautiful Mind" of course is about a schizophrenic mathematical genius who eventually wins the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994. C commented that the movie would no doubt increase their Nobel fever - "Look, even crazy people in our country can win this award! What's wrong with China??"

I think "A Beautiful Mind" is a good movie for them to see. It demonstrates that in America, despite the odds, even a mentally ill man can meaningfully contribute. I don't have any knowledge about the Chinese mental health system but somehow I too many John Nash's have been allowed to escape.

I feel like this has been an exceedingly boring entry. There have been many moments I wanted to report but you really have to write them down while they are emotionally fresh. This blogging thing is not as easy as it looks!